1. Field
One or more aspects of embodiments according to the present invention relate to beam forming, and more particularly to a system for providing true time delay in a computationally efficient manner.
2. Description of Related Art
Beam forming systems may be employed with many-element arrays in high-fidelity radar systems, electronic warfare systems, and communications systems, including communications systems with commercial applications. In such beam forming systems, phase shifters at each element may be used to steer beams and nulls. Due to “beam squint”, phase shifters, which in a narrowband approximation may have an effect equivalent to that of time delays, may not be suited for wideband applications. True time delay systems may be used, instead of phase shifters, in systems with high instantaneous bandwidths. True time delay may be implemented in digital approaches utilizing complex digital circuits, including finite impulse response (FIR) filters and circuits for performing convolution operations, which may require significant field programmable gate array (FPGA) resources, such as digital signal processors (DSPs). Such complex digital circuits may in some cases not fit on a single processor.
Thus, there is a need for a system providing true time delay in a computationally efficient manner.